When Sonia Falc was 26, she fell for a much older man named Colin, before she even met him.

It started when Sonia rented a room in Collins house in London

while he was away teaching English literature in the US.

The first thing Sonia saw when she walked into his home was

books, books, everywhere, just walls lined with bookshelves, poetry, novels, philosophy, psychoanalysis, sociology, linguistics,

just anthropology, health, and also what I noticed was nearly all the books

that I owned he had copies of as well.

Sonia had grown up in South Africa.

Then, after getting her degree in psychology, she'd spent the last few years traveling and staying in hostels.

She got the sense that Colin was a traveler too from the art he

collected. Sonia wanted to meet the man whose house she felt so at home in and then, it happened.

One day when Sonia and a friend were on their way out of the house.

We met Colin on the stairs.

He had these really bright quick eyes with his quick eye movements and he was very energetic and springy on his feet and

after we walked away from each other I said to my friend I find that man so attractive.

Colin noticed Sonia too and even though he was heading back to America, he came up with a way to stay in touch.

When we had spoken, I told him that I write poetry and he'd invited me to send him my poems and that was a big moment for me because I was very young and I'd never ever shown anybody my poems really and he was this professor of English

literature was a published poet and he then said I'm coming back from America

Would you like to have dinner and then we can discuss your poems and just

before the dinner he posted me this brown envelope returning my poems to me on

which he had written comments.

This is like romance novel stuff, okay, sorry, keep going.

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